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WORK AND HABITS 



WORK AND HABITS 



BY 



ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE 

United States Senator from Indiana 



Author of 



'THE BIBLE AS GOOD READING" 



PHILADELPHIA 

HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY 



Copyright, 1905, 1906, by The Curtis Publishing Co. 



Copyright, 1908, by Howard E. Altemus 
Published May, 1908 

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MAY 20 1908 



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CONTENTS 



I Work and Habits 9 

II Money 29 

HI The Vicious Fear of Losing 53 

IV American Character Illustrated by Wash- 
ington 75 



WORK AND HABITS 



WORK AND HABITS 

EVERY man's problem is how to be effect- 
ive. Consciously or unconsciously, the 
question you are asking yourself is, 
"How shall I make my strength count for most 
in this world of effort? And this is the ques- 
tion which every one of us ought to ask himself. 
But not for the purpose of mere selfish gain; 
not to get money for the sake of money, or 
fame for the sake of fame ; but for the sake of 
usefulness in the world; for the sake of help- 
fulness to those we love; for the sake of all 
humanity. Selfishness poisons all it touches, 
and makes all achievement Dead Sea fruit 
which turns to ashes on the lips. 

So the great question, "How shall I make 
the most of myself?" which every worker in 
the world is asking, must be nobly asked and 

9 



WORK AND HABITS 

therefore unselfishly asked if you would have 
it wisely answered. There are two words that 
solve this query of your destiny, and those two 
words are "Work" and "Habits." 

I am writing to men who toil; and I have 
reached an age where I consider no one but 
workers worth while. But by those who toil 
I do not mean only those who work with their 
hands. I mean those who work with their 
brains as well. I mean the engineer who 
drives a locomotive, but also the inventor who 
created it ; the mason and mechanic who erect 
a building, and also the thoughtful man who 
conceived it and the energetic man who made 
it possible; the printer who puts upon the 
page the words of useful books, but also the 
poet who dreams the dreams that printer re- 
produces, the novelist who' enchants our weary 
hours, the economist who instructs us in the 
facts of life and the duties of citizenship, and 
all of that glorious company of brain-workers 
who uplift, make pure and glorify humanity. 
I mean the farmer who sows and reaps, but 

10 



WORK AND HABITS 

also the miller who with his well-earned capital 
grinds the farmer's products into food for the 
feeding of the people. I mean the banker 
as much as the drayman; the physician as 
much as the street-car motorman; the states- 
man who honestly and faithfully labors 
to make this nation better as much as the 
section hand. In short, I mean every man 
who with mind or muscle toils at the tasks 
which our common needs bring to each one 
of us. 

The first thing necessary to the doing of 
good work is that the man who does it shall 
love his work. Lasting work means loving 
work. The greatest cathedral on earth is that 
at Chartres, in France. No man knows its 
architect or its builders. It was erected ac- 
cording to plans devised by holy men who 
cared nothing for their own glory but cared 
everything for the glory of Him whose serv- 
ants they were. It was builded by thousands 
of artisans who came from all over France 
and gave their services without price and even 

ii 



WORK AND HABITS 

without record, as an act of worship. The 
materials were furnished by tens of thousands 
of peasants, and each stone they contributed 
was consecrated by prayer and swung to* posi- 
tion with the power of a Divine affection. 
And so the cathedral at Chartres stands, and 
will forever stand, as the highest type of 
sacred architecture the world has ever known. 
Such devotion to our daily tasks is not pos- 
sible to any of us in the hurried and harried 
civilization of to-day. We must have bread; 
we must fill our home with the necessities and 
comforts of life. Our first business is to make 
our loved ones happy. Wages, profits and all 
kinds of money reward for all we do are abso- 
lutely necessary. Yet those wages and profits 
will be higher if we are in love with the work 
which brings them to us. They will not only 
be greater, but every cent of them will add to 
our lives a sweetness and fragrance which the 
pay that is earned by an unwilling worker 
never brings. The man who is in love with 
his work not only gets more for that work, 

12 



WORK AND HABITS 



power than that of the man who hates the 
task that brings him his livelihood. The well- 
earned dollar is a wise dollar; the ill-gotten 
dollar is a foolish dollar. 

Fall in love with your work. That is the 
first rule for doing your work well. It is also 
the golden rule of happiness. Fall in love 
with your work and your labor will bring you 
joy as well as money. ¥ 

All the happiness this life affords is found 
in three things : first, a true relation to God ; 
second, the care of other people; third, the 
doing with all your might work which you 
love to do. There is no true and lasting hap- 
piness possible from any other source. Neg- 
lect God, care nothing for other people, de- 
spise your work, and wealth will buy you 
nothing but misery — power will bring you 
nothing but heartache. Build your life upon 
these three foundations and you build your 
house upon a rock. Build your life on dis- 
belief in God, on selfishness to others, on 

13 



WORK AND HABITS 

hatred of your own work — and you build your 
house upon the sand. 

Every man can be in love with his work if 
he will always think of how well he can do 
that work and not how easily he can do it. 
Let every one of us, as we go about our daily 
tasks, keep saying to himself every moment, 
"I am going to do my work so well to-day 
that to-night I will congratulate myself upon 
it." That is the way to get others to con- 
gratulate you upon it. Win your own intelli- 
gent approval in the doing of your work and 
you will also win the honest approval of your 
fellow-men. And when a man intelligently ap- 
proves of himself and his fellow-men approve 
of him he has made his daily toil yield not 
only money but also the sweetest fruit of life. 

Never say to yourself that your work is too 
hard; say to yourself instead, "I will do it so 
well that the very doing of it will make it 
easy." Never forget that the only real way 
to do your work easily is to do it well. Never 
pity yourself. Self-pity begets a sickness of 
14 



WORK AND HABITS 

the soul from which few recover. Never un- 
dervalue yourself. Believe in yourself. Be- 
lieve that you can do your work well, and then 
make good. Never doubt yourself. Faith in 
one's self unlocks those hidden powers that all 
of us have, but that so few of us use. Every 
man and woman has undeveloped strength un- 
dreamed of until emergencies call it forth. 
Every one of us has been surprised at how 
much we can do and how well we can do it 
when we have to do it. 

Do not wait for these emergencies to call out 
the might within you. Realize your assets 
every day. God has made an investment in 
every one of us; shall we go to Him when 
our life is done giving Him no return upon 
that investment? When He invested in you 
he meant that you should pay Him dividends 
in the betterment of the world and helpful- 
ness to your fellow-men. You can do this 
only by your best work. And your best work 
is possible only by faith in yourself and by 
love of your work. 

is 



WORK AND HABITS 

The second practical rule for doing good 
work yourself is to appreciate and praise the 
good work of others. Never envy anybody. 
Jealousy destroys efficiency. The man who 
spends his strength envying the good work of 
another man will have little strength left to 
do good work himself. Get the habit of hap- 
piness over other people's success. Practice 
praising the work of others. It will make 
your fellow-man happy, but it will make you 
happier than it makes him. It will encourage 
him, but it will encourage you more. 

In public life, when a man, whether friend 
or enemy, makes a good fight for a good law 
or against a bad one, or takes a stand for 
righteousness or delivers an effective speech 
for a noble cause, I make it a point to praise 
that man, not only to the world and to him- 
self, but to praise him in the secret councils 
of my own soul. I do this as a matter, first, 
of justice, and, second, of my own spiritual 
and moral strengthening. When in my own 
conscience as well as to other people I praise 
16 



WORK AND HABITS 

that man's achievement, I have made my mind 
and soul stronger for doing my own work ; 
I have fortified my spirit for making my own 
fights. 

But if in my heart I hate him for having 
done this thing well, I have weakened myself 
for the doing of my own tasks; I have les- 
sened my own courage for the battles I must 
wage. The man who secretly envies the good 
work of a fellow-man secretly despises him- 
self. Jealousy of a fellow-workman means 
paralysis of your own powers. I said that I 
praise good work, whether done by friend or 
enemy; but if any man is my enemy he must 
do all the hating, for I am too busy to be any- 
body's enemy. I have no time for hatred. 

On the other hand, every one of us should 
fearlessly condemn bad work and rebuke the 
bad workman. The man who slights his 
work; the contractor who uses bad materials 
when he is paid for good ; the public man who 
neglects to study and master the questions the 
people have commissioned him to solve; the 

2— Work and Habits. iy 



WORK AND HABITS 

banker who gambles with other people's money 
instead of faithfully guarding it; the lawyer 
who takes a client's fee and does not pains- 
takingly prepare his case; the editor who de- 
ceives the people in the interest of the owner 
of his paper — in short, every man and woman 
who accepts wages, profits, salary or any re- 
ward for doing work and then does that work 
as cheaply or as falsely as possible instead of 
as thoroughly and as well as possible, should 
be denounced by all good workmen. Such 
people are frauds; and frauds are the evil 
weeds of human effort. They should be ex- 
terminated as the farmer exterminates the 
cockle-burs which grow among his corn and 
take from the earth that nourishment which 
should go into the golden ear. 

Jesus had no unkind word for any human 
being except for such people as this. You 
will find in all His teachings nothing but love 
for every man and woman excepting only the 
hypocrites. Them He scourges with words of 
wrath. 
18 



WORK AND HABITS 

Rules for good work fail without good 
habits. Habit is the most powerful influence 
in human life. Shakespeare makes Hamlet 
say that "Habit is a second nature." Look to 
your habits as you would look to your life or 
your honor; for habits hold both life and 
honor. More men fail in their adventures, 
more neglect of public duty results, more bad 
work of every kind is produced by bad habits 
than by any other cause. 

Good habits are the physical basis of good 
work, just as love of the work is its soul. 
Ruskin says that no immortal work has been 
done in the world since tobacco was discov- 
ered. Of course, this is not true; but the mean- 
ing behind it is true. No man can be at his 
best whose brain is inflamed by drink or whose 
nerves are shaken by narcotics. And you must 
be at your best. More and more, other men 
are determining to be at their best. If every 
man is not at his best it is his own fault. 
Never blame other people for your misfor- 
tunes. There is such a thing as luck, and 

19 



WORK AND HABITS 

sometimes men seem pursued by evil fortune; 
but generally speaking we are the architects of 
our own failures. 

In one of Maeterlinck's wonderful stories he 
tells of a powerful man of the Middle Ages 
who conceived great plans and executed them, 
but always with difficulty. Frequently he al- 
most failed, and succeeded only by super- 
human effort. Finally he found that a secret 
enemy was always working against his most 
careful plans, neutralizing his most strenuous 
exertions. As the years passed he determined 
to find and destroy this enemy. Life was not 
worth living with this hidden foe forever cir- 
cling him with difficulties. One evening he 
went out for a walk. He saw another man 
approaching him. By that strange instinct 
which warns us of danger he knew that this 
man was his lifelong enemy. He resolved to 
kill him. As he approached, he observed that 
this man wore a mask. But, conscious that this 
was the antagonist of his life, he said as they 
met : "You are the man who from my youth 
20 



WORK AND HABITS 

till now has been pursuing me, thwarting me, 
almost defeating me. I mean to kill you, but 
I will give you a chance for your life. Draw 
and defend yourself." The stranger said, as 
he drew his sword, "I am at your service, but 
first see who it is that you would fight. ,, He 
removed his mask and the man stood before 
himself. 

This fable is true of every one of us. More, 
as his own enemy a man multiplies himself. 
Where you think an enemy has injured you, 
look closely, and nine times out of ten you 
will find yourself in some evil guise. But 
oftenest you will find yourself in the form of 
your habits. 

If there is any evil in us, bad habits will 
develop it. And there is evil in all of us. Put 
your strength to the test, but never your weak- 
ness. Dare to try the apparently impossible 
tasks if they are tasks for good; never fear 
failure — all the world loves a good loser; and 
when you fail in the right, your defeat is only 
the beginning of final victory. But fly from 

21 



WORK AND HABITS 

the easiest thing that is wrong ; no man knows 
how far he can withstand it. And remember 
that we never get so old that the seeds of 
wickedness will not sprout and grow and bear 
the fruit of ruin, if watered and nourished by 
bad habits. 

Day by day civilization is demanding more 
of each one of us — more that is pure and 
strong. Twentieth-century society tolerates no 
weakness, no taint in individual worker. To- 
day every man must be above suspicion. Each 
one of us must be proof against calumny. 
Everybody is lied about — sometimes by envy, 
sometimes by ignorance. Never resent a false- 
hood about yourself — after all, it is a test of 
your reputation. Let your life, not your 
words, be your rebuke of slander. No man 
with bad habits can do good work. Every 
man's work speaks for him or against him. 
Be superior to slander by doing well your 
work, day in and day out, and remember that 
perfect habits are necessary to perfect work. 

No man with bad habits can do much work 

22 



WORK AND HABITS 

of any kind, or any work of a good kind. 
Look at a man's work if you would know his 
habits. A man's habits are known by the work 
he does. The surest way, but one, of keeping 
your habits clean is carefully to watch the be- 
ginnings of bad habits; for a bad habit has 
a velvet foot. It steals upon one softly, 
unawares. First it charms, next masters, 
then destroys you. In the moral philosophy 
which I studied in college this illustration was 
given : 

"Neglect your conscience for only two weeks 
and it begins to disappear; obey its faintest 
whisper for two weeks and it becomes as deli- 
cate as a woman's blush." 

The supreme enemy of bad habits is re- 
ligion. I do not mean that this is necessary. 
I have known good men who were not re- 
ligious and bad men who pretended to be re- 
ligious. But the man who in his heart of 
hearts as well as in his daily walk believes and 
practices the Christian faith, is helped by a 
power outside of himself and above himself. 

23 



WORK AND HABITS 

His whole moral being is vitalized. I do not 
pretend to say this so much from experience — 
I wish I might — but I do say it with all my 
might from observation. The wisdom of Au- 
relius, Epictetus, Confucius is a tonic to the 
soul ; but the words of Jesus are life itself. As 
a mere matter of practical success in life, as 
a mere method of making the most out of him- 
self, I would rather have a son, brother or 
friend become a thoroughgoing Christian than 
to have any other single good fortune come to 
him. 

I do not mean that a man shall be religious 
with his intellect only. It is not enough that 
he shall be a Christian in his mind alone. Get 
your Christianity into your blood. Such a 
Christian cannot do poor work or dishonest 
work. To such a Christian, such work would 
not only be a fraud upon his employer but a 
betrayal of his God. The man who has his 
Christianity in his blood cannot have bad habits. 
To such a Christian, bad habits would be 
not only an injustice to himself and a wrong 
24 



WORK AND HABITS 

to wife and children, but an insult to the 
Master. 

"What," said Victor Hugo, "is the grandest 
thing in the world?. The midst of the ocean 
in a cloudless night. And what is grander than 
that? The starry heavens. What is grander 
than the starry heavens? The soul of man/' 
And it is this soul of man, the noblest thing 
in all the universe, to which the Christian re- 
ligion speaks. It is to lift ever upward the 
soul of man that all the world's saints, states- 
men and heroes have prayed and thought and 
perished. It is to make free and give wings 
to the soul of man that this Christian civiliza- 
tion exists. That men and women shall be 
better, nobler, every day; that happiness shall 
be greater; that our country and the world 
shall steadily become a lovelier place to live 
in; that righteousness shall prevail is, after all, 
the purpose of all progress. 



25 



MONEY 



MONEY 



'nr^HE first thing you have got to do in this 
JL life is to support yourself. The second 
thing you have got to do in this life is 
to support a family. The third thing you have 
got to do in this life is to help other people. 
When you have done these things you have 
succeeded. 

This division of life's activities is the nat- 
ural, the ideal one. Everything a man does 
beyond the . mere care of himself, wife and 
children should directly help other human be- 
ings outside of the clan of his own kin. He 
who has ability and energy more than enough 
to provide for his own owes that excess of 
energy and ability to the people. If he uses 
it for himself or his family he indulges in gross 
selfishness. He indulges in gross folly, too. 
But, then, is not selfishness always folly? 

29 



WORK AND HABITS 

Behold the man who, having enough money 
for himself and all who depend upon him, still 
masses added millions to that sufficiency merely 
to satisfy his money-appetite, or to fill the 
golden reservoir from which his children may 
drink the pleasing but deadly waters of dissi- 
pation. That man does folly. Nature pun- 
ishes him for it, too. This very excess of 
wealth destroys his offspring mentally, mor- 
ally, physically. His children degenerate in 
ability and moral fiber in the poisoned atmos- 
phere of that "society" to which their wealth 
invites them. 

The successful sons of our vastly rich, the 
happy daughters of our modern Midases, are 
so few in number that they are notable. Name 
me one vigorous, powerful, masterful heir of 
any historic American money-getter, and I will 
show you more magazine articles and news- 
paper sketches about him than you can read in 
a year. He or she is a curiosity, you see — 
something so extraordinary that the people are 
interested. 
30 



MONEY 

Ordinarily, the man who has amassed wealth 
with the unwisdom of selfishness, bequeaths to 
his son, along with the money, a sneering cyni- 
cism for all the sound and noble uses to which 
that wealth can be put. And so these sons and 
daughters destroy themselves by a life of do- 
nothingness, an existence foul with can- 
cerous pleasures. Thus, at midlife his chil- 
dren have sucked, from the golden but fatal 
orange which their father gave them, an ennui 
that drives them to desperation. 

I say this much at the beginning to burn in 
upon your very soul, young man, this pro- 
found truth: The making of money for the 
sake of money is folly, and the very basest 
and most vicious folly at that. 

It is a commercial age, we are told, and so 
it is. And that is why you should see to it 
that the dollar never becomes your ideal. You 
should never think of money as the real re- 
ward for your life's work or any part of it. 
Money is not the reward for your work, young 
man. The work itself is your reward. The 

3i 



WORK AND HABITS 

creation of a perfect piece of craftsmanship is 
your reward. If you are a painter, your pic- 
ture is your reward. If you are a statesman, 
the wise law you drafted or the bad one you de- 
feated is your reward. The money that comes 
from whatever work you do is primarily a 
measure of that work's excellence, it is true, but 
really an opportunity for you to do more and 
better work. But no man will do anything of 
which he will be proud after a while who says 
of his task : "There is a noble work completed 
—and so many thousands to my bank account/ 

Having hammered it in, then, that the 
money ideal is a wicked ideal, taking the soul 
out of your work and beclouding all the sunny 
happiness of your life, I shall not be misunder- 
stood when I say that the very first thing for 
a young man to understand is that his very 
first duty in life is to make money. 

Self-support is the first duty of man. You 
are in no position to help the world until you 
have demonstrated your ability to help yourself. 
32 



MONEY 

In proportion as your powers of self-help 
grow, it is your duty to take on new respon- 
sibilities toward others. You see, there must 
be something upon which your increasing abil- 
ity to make money can expend itself. Other- 
i wise, it runs riot in destroying habits or in 
the base passion of the miser. 

So, after you have made enough money to 
live on yourself and are producing a surplus 
r ever so small, the whole of your energies 
should be devoted to caring for a wife and 
children and the building of a house. I say 
the moment you are making the smallest sur- 
plus above the amount necessary to support 
yourself, for I repeat that if you wait for a 
larger surplus, this excess will begin to ex- 
pend itself in luxuries which will disintegrate 
you, body and soul, or else will plant the seeds 
of greed which will strangle you. 

There is only one way to keep you a warm- 
blooded, sane-minded, living, growing man, 
and that is to keep your responsibilities just a 
little bit ahead of your earnings. In that way, 

3 — Work and Habits. <j^ 



WORK AND HABITS 

every dollar you make is absorbed usefully, 
helpfully, happily; and by one of the most 
beautiful laws of Nature your producing pow- 
ers are at the same time increased beyond the 
demands upon them. 

In all of us are powers lying latent, or dor- 
mant, if you like that word better. One by 
one they are called into being by the inspira- 
tion of our own activities, by the magic of our 
exercised usefulness to others and to the world. 
Do not all of us occasionally have flashes 
of insight into our own capabilities, which a 
moment before we should have denied and 
which, the moment after we have thus briefly 
seen them, appear too good and extraordinary 
to be real ? There is positively no limit to the 
powers of the human mind. For example, we 
all look upon a given situation and say that a 
certain thing cannot be done, that it is humanly 
impossible ; and yet, when we are put right up 
to that very situation we ourselves perform 
that impossible thing. 

Thus the mind, the character and all the 
34 



MONEY 

powers of them keep growing, expanding. 
Thus our manhood and our womanhood be- 
come larger, stronger, nobler, simpler; and 

j we undertake things which to the flabby-mus- 
cled and timid-souled appear to be the very- 
recklessness of daring, but which to the man 
or woman with developed powers are not even 
unusual, but merely natural and inevitable. 

But, mark you, such development can never 
come from the money ideal. It can come only 
from the helpful ideal. And so it is that you 
must keep your responsibilities to others al~ 

| ways just a little bit ahead of your income in- 
stead of keeping your income ahead of your re- 
sponsibilities. This will appear questionable 
only because the old idea has been that of Iago : 
"Put money in thy purse, Roderigo" ; and the 
old idea has been that the measure of merit is 
money. 

But the measure of merit is not money; at 
least the measure of merit is no longer money. 
That is one of the crude things that we have 
outgrown. We are living in the twentieth 

35 



WORK AND HABITS 

century now, and not in the days of Shy lock. 
The measure of merit to-day is achievement. 
The twentieth-century measure of manhood is 
human helpfulness. 

That is why it is that we no longer respect 
vast wealth in and for itself. It is not even 
distinguished to be a millionaire any more. A 
bright man in Washington coined the phrase 
"poor rich trash' ' for all the wealthy inhabi- 
tants of that town who have less than ten mil- 
lion dollars. It is not particularly notable, you 
know, to have less than ten millions. It is not 
even notable to have more than ten millions. 

The millionaire is getting to be quite com- 
monplace. 

When a man or a family gets up to one hun- 
dred millions or more they then become a curi- 
osity — a sort of monstrous by-product of our 
industrial civilization. The only way such a 
person can, in these days, win the favorable 
regard of his fellow human beings is by mak- 
ing his money do helpful things for the rest of 
humanity. His millions alone do not give him 
36 



MONEY 

the entree even to our respect, much less to 
our admiration. 

The phrase "vulgar millions" has crept into 
our common speech, and it will disappear only 
when the new and modern conception of pri- 
vate wealth shall have worked its beneficent re- 
sults and made all millionaires nothing more 
than the managers of trust funds for the bet- 
terment, not of themselves or their immediate 
families, but of the race. 

A fifty-millionaire may build a palace on 
Fifth Avenue ; but that does not make us even 
respect him. We get on top of a 'bus, or one 
of the "Seeing New York" motor-cars, and 
glance at these structures as we pass, usually 
with good, sound, hearty contempt in our 
American hearts, and say: "For heaven's 
sake! What did he do that for?" 

Or another of this crowd may go to Eng- 
land, buy his or her way into so-called aristo- 
cratic circles, entertain a decadent portion of 
the nobility, get his or her name in the 
columns of the newspapers (for we like to read 

37 



WORK AND HABITS 

about the antics of our irresponsible rich), and 
the common American is not impressed the 
least bit. 

Would it not be well for foreigners to know 
that we Americans do not consider the gilded 
wanderers from this country, to which the 
nobility of Europe pays so much atten- 
tion, as Americans at all. They are not 
the least bit typical of this fine, free, vital, 
vigorous, honest American people. Per- 
haps their fathers were, or, at the furthest, 
their grandfathers. For these immediate 
ancestors of our inheritors of vast riches 
were mostly hard-working, God-fearing, 
simple folk, fresh from the soil, laying, 
with their vigorous intellect, fearless hearts 
and granite muscles, the foundation of the 
fortunes which their commonplace descendants 
are squandering in Europe. 

No ! The only way in which the master of 
millions can earn the respect and attention of 
the humblest American is by using his wealth 
to help his fellow-man; and the regard of the 
38 



MONEY 

common men and women of our country is 
worth a good deal more to these very million- 
aires than anything else in the world, for 
none of us liveth to himself. 

Do we not see this demonstrated in the 
growing fashion of practical and systematic 
philanthropy among our very rich men? One 
builds libraries which will endure for cen- 
turies ; another endows universities, whose 
growth will make them in a few years re- 
spectable rivals of many foreign institutions of 
learning, and which in the distant future will 
reach far beyond the calculation of any mind 
in their permanently increasing usefulness to 
the race. Still another erects mighty cathe- 
drals, such as Emerson describes in his in- 
spired poem, "The Problem" — places of wor- 
ship where for all time the humblest and the 
loftiest may find common manhood and kin- 
ship in their common worship of the common 
Father of us all; a fourth changes a wilder- 
ness into a material paradise, making gardens 
of its swamps, and of its hills and dales a fairy- 

39 



WORK AND HABITS 

land; a fifth pours out his wealth to turn the 
wheels of some great world-work. 

Cynicism with its unwisdom has explained 
these generosities of the sordid, these benefac- 
tions of what the world has believed and Mr. 
David Graham Phillips so cuttingly called, our 
"master rogues/' as the contributions of the 
criminal to placate the Furies and stay the re- 
sistless and never-failing hand of Retribution. 
But this is not the explanation. It is the rich 
man's obedience to the growing modern ideal 
of money — it is his agreement with the in- 
creasing popular conviction that, though a man 
may not be criminal in the accumulation of his 
wealth, he becomes criminal when he does not 
use that wealth for the benefit of his race. 

And this is a new ideal. Heretofore, the be- 
lief has been that wealth should be accumulated 
for the man's family and his children. The 
old notion was that a man might do what he 
would with his fortune; but that concept is 
passing away so rapidly that it has now almost 
disappeared. 
40 



MONEY 

Beyond a certain point, a man cannot use 
his wealth for his family or himself. That 
point passed, he must use his riches for his 
fellow-man. This is the twentieth-century 
ideal of money. This is the belief which has 
already become a fixture in the minds and 
hearts of the American millions. And it is 
an unconscious obedience to that Higher Voice 
that secretly speaks to the soul of every man — 
that more and more is making our American 
millionaires practical and philanthropic dis- 
tributors of their accumulations for aiding and 
uplifting Americans whom they never saw and 
future generations yet unborn. 

Thus it is that the day of the private for- 
tune is past. There are no private fortunes 
any more. There never can be private for- 
tunes again as that term was understood one 
hundred years ago, fifty years ago, ten years 
ago. When a man makes money in excess of 
all possible honorable uses to which he and his 
family can put that money, his fortune ceases 

41 



WORK AND HABITS 

to be a private fortune, just as the man him- 
self ceases to be a private citizen. 

He could not help this if he would. We 
could not help it if we would. All the news- 
papers in the country could not help this con- 
dition. If Congress and every State in the 
Union were to pass laws in addition to the 
ones already in existence on private property, 
the private fortune as heretofore understood 
could never again be restored. For the man 
who is rich to excess becomes by that very fact 
a public man. 

The man in the street and in the furrow, 
the good women who make heavenly the com- 
mon homes of the republic, the street-car 
drivers, the merchants, the miners who dwell 
in darkness that we may have light, the sailors 
on the high sea, and every manner and condi- 
tion of man and woman, want to know about 
this man. They want to know what he is 
doing with his wealth. 

No matter whether they ought to want to 
know about this or not — it is the law of the 
42 - 



MONEY 

human mind that they do* want to know about 
it. And so the excessively rich man has fo- 
cused upon him the attention of millions upon 
millions of his fellow human beings among 
whom he lives. This concentrated searchlight 
never leaves him. These eighty millions know 
about him, know what he is doing, believe 
they know what he ought to do. 

All this creates a condition which is not 
alone psychological, although that would be 
powerful enough. This steady, unvarying in- 
tent and intense attention which eighty mil- 
lions of people are giving to the excessively 
rich among them is a concrete, definite, prac- 
tical thing which the Croesus must take into 
account whether he will or no. 

More and more he is taking it into ac- 
count. More and more he is doing zvhat the 
millions of his fellow-citizens think he ought 
to do, and what, in reality, he ought to do, 
! with his wealth. More and more he is con- 
forming to the modern and Christian ideal of 
wealth. And so every year and every day he 

43 



WORK AND HABITS 

is coming to be less and less the owner of a 
private fortune and more and more the trustee 
of a public fund. 

I say that rich men are being forced to con- 
form to this ideal by public opinion. Your 
wealthy man cannot get the world's approving 
recognition in any other way. And after all, 
the approbation of one's fellow human beings, 
either now or in the future, is the most power- 
ful influence that moves the souls of men. 

"When I am gone, I want my fellow-men 
to say that I did something with my wealth to 
make this old world better," said one of the 
world's richest men. Here was posthumous 
public opinion working on this thousand- 
handed money gatherer. 

Public opinion! There is no human force 
at all equal to it. When statesmen write a new 
law for a nation they create nothing — they 
merely make a note of crystallized public 
opinion. The mass of the statutes of all na- 
tions are practically identical. And what are 
they? The mere setting down in w r ords of 
44 



MONEY 

the permanent convictions at which the race 
has arrived. This same public opinion con- 
trols the making of war, directs the conduct 
of armies, determines the conclusion of 
peace. 

If you tell me there are rich men who are 
indifferent to public opinion, I answer that 
such men are already degenerate, and the pro- 
cesses of Nature will soon destroy them and 
their names from the face of the earth, just 
as the same processes dissipate their fortunes. 
It is only men who are great enough and broad 
enough to understand the ideal this chapter 
presents, and who are strong enough to feel the 
psychological force of the thought of their 
eighty millions of fellow-citizens, and who are 
wise enough to understand the concrete, tan- 
gible, business conditions which that thought 
of the millions creates, who will be able either 
to increase their wealth or to hold on for any 
length of time to even a small portion of what 
they have. 

The one great lesson of history is that, 

45 



WORK AND HABITS 

through all the ages, mankind has steadily 
struggled upward toward the light, and that 
the mind and conscience of myriads of mil- 
lions of human beings on this earth have in 
themselves the curative properties for all our 
human wrongs. Ahd so I think that every 
human evil will, of itself, right itself in the 
end. The very movement which this chapter 
has been observing shows the growth of an 
ideal ; shows how the over lords of wealth are 
being forced, in spite of themselves, to con- 
form to that ideal; and all without a single 
law upon the statute-books, all by force of that 
mysterious but irresistible power — humanity's 
common and concentrated thought. 

No man can say that finally this twentieth- 
century ideal of money will not be written 
into law. If the masters of wealth become 
the servants of that ideal, it will not be written 
into law, because it will not need to be written 
into law. But if they resist the ideal, if they 
cling to the medieval doctrine that what a man 
46 



MONEY 

shall do with his wealth is nobody's business 
but his own, then this thought of the universal 
mind will some day crystallize into statutes; 
and we shall have either the accumulation of 
great fortunes prevented by law or their 
management so directed by law that they shall 
serve the country from which they were drawn 
and the people from whose necessities they 
were made. So go right ahead and make 
money, young man — 

Not for to hide it in a hedge, 

Nor for a train attendant; 
But for the glorious privilege 

Of being independent. 

Yes, go ahead and make money — that's 
your first duty; but understand that the 
modern ideal of money robs it of its old-time 
and sordid value — gives it a new and nobler 
value. Understand that, in this twentieth 
century, money-lust will spell your ruin. 
Understand that the modern ideal demands 
the use of your excess abilities for your fellow- 
man. 

47 



WORK AND HABITS 

When you get this thoroughly into your 
consciousness you will think every day, as 
you work at building up your business, that 
the building of it is not the erection of a mere 
money machine, but the development of an in- 
dustry where fellow human beings can work 
at their best; where the powers of your em- 
ployes are being constantly developed and their 
lives daily sweetened; where the whole power 
of the enterprise over which you preside is for 
the uplifting of all who have anything to do 
with it. 

And remember, finally, that the profits which 
come to you from your business — over and 
above what is necessary for yourself, your 
wife and your children, and what remains 
after reinvesting in your plant for its proper 
development — must be administered as a trust 
fund for the nation of which you are a part 
and under whose beneficent institutions your 
God-given abilities have had free play. For 
the man of large powers must remember that 
those powers are not his. Who deserves any 
48 



MONEY 

credit for having a master mind? Not you, 
most certainly. God gave you your resource- 
ful intellect, you who by virtue of it rule your 
fellows. God gave you that intrepid will, 
those magnificent lungs, that mighty heart. 
Your wealth of mental and physical power is 
not of your own making. They are the equip- 
ment with which the Almighty has endowed 
you. 

Very well! do you imagine that He made 
you a king among men for your own sake ? 
No ! He gave you your gifts to use as a sacred 
trust for the benefit of our common humanity. 
And he who uses for his own selfish purposes 
the mind and will and character given him 
by the All-Father in trust for his fellow-man 
not only robs his brothers for whom he is 
trustee, but he cheats the great Ruler of the 
Universe Himself who bestowed these talents 
upon this disloyal servant. 

I would have every young man who is 
going out into life in this money age get 
these views firmly in his heart as a part of 

4 — Work and Habits. aq 



WORK AND HABITS 

his living creed. Yes, and I would have every 
man, young and old, who is the possessor of 
excess wealth, ponder deeply this twentieth- 
century ideal of money which has taken hold 
of the mind and conscience of the American 
people. For be sure, O lords of wealth, that, i 
unless you do conform to the thought of these 
millions and use your great abilities to ad- 
minister your vast accumulations for human 
helpfulness, the people will make you do, by 
written law, what they have failed to make 
you do by their unspoken thought. 



50 



THE VICIOUS FEAR 
OF LOSING 



THE VICIOUS FEAR OF LOSING 

ONE night in Washington a group of 
gentlemen sat talking about the tre- 
mendous moral renaissance that was 
then uplifting the nation, and were saying that 
it was akin to the other great spiritual and 
moral revolutions which have so often moved 
the Christian world. It was observed that the 
people are ahead of Congress; that Congress 
appears to be forced, by accumulating public 
opinion, to make those advances in legislation 
necessary to keep the statute books of the re- 
public abreast of the thought and conscience of 
the country ; and the curious phenomenon was 
noted that, even where a reform is well under 
way, a sudden right-about-face upon some 
salient feature will often occur, and a majority 
of Congressmen and Senators will be found 

53 



WORK AND HABITS 

taking a contradictory position in a sort of 
sheeplike panic. 

This was putting it far too strongly, of 
course; the nation's legislators stand by their 
guns fairly well. And yet in these sudden 
linings-up on phases of legislation contrary to 
the spirit of the law which is being enacted, is 
found one of the chief difficulties in securing 
consistent, unspoiled and unmutilated laws 
which the necessities of business and the safety 
of the people require. And the explanation of 
this is found in that peculiar mental and 
spiritual cowardice inherent in human char- 
acter. 

The vicious fear of losing is the greatest 
obstacle to the passage of needed laws with 
which the practical and fearless legislator has 
to contend. 

"My observation," said one of the company 
who were discussing this question, "extends 
over twenty years. And what that observa- 
tion teaches me is that we have too many 
'winners' in American public life, and too few 
54 



THE VICIOUS FEAR OF LOSING 

losers/ What this country needs in its 
national legislation is more good 'losers' and 
fewer 'winners;' what we need is more men 
who are perfectly willing to be defeated in a 
fight, rather than to yield on essential points, 
just because their constituents will be told that 
they have been beaten if they do not yield. 

"Whenever the capable manager or manipu- 
lator of legislation gets almost a majority he 
immediately makes it clear to the weak-kneed 
ones that they will lose if they do not come 
with him. And there is at once a scampering 
for 'the band-wagon. ' Most of the weaklings 
have no particular conviction one way or the 
other — their chief desire, and almost their sole 
thought, is how to remain in public life. And, 
by some strange process of instinct, rather than 
reasoning, they think they cannot keep in pub- 
lic life if they are defeated. So over they 
go to what they are told is almost sure to be 
'the winning side.' " 

The man who said this was perhaps as 
capable an observer of events as any living 

55 



WORK AND HABITS 

American ; and, to those familiar with the pro- 
cess of legislation, his words strike fairly in the 
center of one of the most serious evils and 
difficulties in securing such practical legislation 
as is needed by the people. 

The best evidence of this is in the question 
which the shrewd Washington correspondents, 
who are observing the process of a legislative 
battle, always ask when things have come to 
a head. "This means that So-and-So got 
beaten, doesn't it?" is their question — or: 
"Then So-and-So lost out, did he ?" or, "Then 
So-and-So wins, does he not?" We are not 
very far away from the primal man, after all; 
for the correspondents' point of view is pretty 
nearly the point of view of us all. 

What we want to know of our hero is: 
"Did he win or lose?" We have no very par- 
ticular thought as to what it was that he won 
or lost. 

We see this in the fevered anxiety of men in 
public life as to what their papers at home shall 
say of them. An unfriendly newspaper thinks 
56 



THE VICIOUS FEAR OF LOSING 

it can do a public man no greater harm than 
prominently to display the fact that he has 
lost a battle. It believes that it can do its 
favorite no greater favor than to state that 
"Mr. So-and-So wins/' 

I remember seeing, not very long ago, in a 
far Northwestern paper very unfriendly to a 
man of that section, an article to the effect that 
the politician in question had "lost out." This 
was supposed to hurt him with the other poli- 
ticians of his party. The truth was, however, 
that, although this man had apparently lost, 
he had in reality won. 

Another newspaper which, for personal and 
peculiar reasons, was childishly in favor of a 
certain Congressman for whose interests it 
was necessary to chronicle a victory, headed a 
dispatch : "So-and-So victorious" — and the 
dispatch proceeded to show how he had won a 
tremendous victory in a bitter fight. As a 
matter of fact, this second man had won noth- 
ing, had proposed nothing, had done nothing 
and had had no fight. It was merely thought 

57 



WORK AND HABITS 

necessary, however, to represent that he had 
"ivon" something or other. 

The point to all this is that the question 
which is uppermost in the minds of the rank 
and file of public men is that in no circum- 
stances must they appear to lose, no matter 
what it is they lose; and that at all hazards 
they must appear to win, no matter what it is 
they win, or whether, in fact, they win at all. 
The greatest moral vice of our present-day 
public man is the vicious fear of losing. It is 
far greater than the vice of bribery, of which 
hardly any exists, if indeed there is any. It 
is far greater than the ownership of public men 
by interests and corporations, of which there 
is not a great deal. For it is the weakness on 
which the manipulators of legislation play 
with greater effect than upon all other re- 
sources at their command. 

"I will fight to the bitter death for this 
provision/' said a certain Congressman, in dis- 
cussing a certain provision of a bill, over which 
there was an unusually bitter contest and which 
58 



THE VICIOUS FEAR OF LOSING 

was finally adopted. Yet, three days later, the 
same man said : "Look here, boys, it seems 
to me that they have got us beat." 

"What of that?" said a more sturdy col- 
league. 

"Oh, well," said this valiant Congressman, 
"I cannot afford to get licked. I do not pur- 
pose to be on the losing side/' 

And, sure enough, he turned up against the 
very provision which, but three days before, 
he so fiercely championed. He had not 
changed his opinion at all. He had merely 
calculated that he would be on the losing side 
if he was for that provision, and he felt that 
it was necessary, at all hazards, to appear to 
his constituents to be on the winning side. 
He was seized with the vicious fear of losing. 
That was all. But, as it turned out, that very 
feature of the bill was adopted, after all! 

Decidedly, we have too many "winners" and 
too few "losers" in American public life; too 
many men who simply have not the nerve to 
read in the morning paper that they have been 

59 



: 



WORK AND HABITS 

beaten ; too few men who are willing to march 
right up to guns for the cause which they be- 
lieve to be right. 

I do not mean by this that a man ought to 
sacrifice a measure which is in peril by not 
yielding on any point. Legislation, of course, 
is a practical matter. Take some great reform 
bill vital to the nation, such as the railway 
rate bill ; or even more, the meat inspection 
bill; or the pure food bill; or the statehood 
bill, etc. The man who fights for measures 
like these ought to fight to the last gasp for 
the whole bill. And yet, if, at the last moment, 
the opposition is strong enough to defeat the 
whole measure unless its champion yields on 
some minute point, he is a traitor to the re- 
form for which he fights if he sacrifices the 
substance of the bill to the detail. 

Let him get the principle of the bill, if neces- 
sary, by yielding the details. Of course, if the 
detail itself involves the principles vital to the 
zvhole reform, then he ought to go down in 
defeat rather than surrender a line or a let- 
60 



THE VICIOUS FEAR OF LOSING 

ter. But the philosophy of compromising, 
which involves concessions sometimes even 
to corrupt interests rather than to a sacrifice 
of the salient features of a measure, is far re- 
moved from the vicious fear of losing which 
makes legislators yield to superior numbers. 

A few years ago a certain prominent pub- 
lic man, who is a careful observer of the trend 
of public opinion, calculated that the anti-impe- 
j rialists were about to win, and accordingly he 
said in a speech that the Philippines were a 
frightful burden, a great mistake — and various 
other brilliant and quotable things. Within 
one month, however, the same man became 
convinced that the settled determination of the 
American millions was to hold the Philippines. 
He lost no time, then, in getting on to that 
patriotic band-wagon, and a ringing speech was 
made, filled with the loftiest eloquence about 
our duty toward our oriental wards and our 
determination under God to hold forever that 
splendid archipelago, the door of the Orient, to 
whose entrance we had been providentially di- 

61 



WORK AND HABITS 

rected and in which we were forever 
established. 

Strange to say, the eloquence of this speech 
was real. It rang true. It voiced the man's 
real convictions. I have seldom listened to a 
finer piece of oratory. It was all the finer be- 
cause he had made up his mind that the pub- 
lic opinion of the country was precisely what 
his own private opinions were. But the reason 
he had changed position was that, in the first 
instance, he had estimated that the anti-impe- 
rialists would win, and, in the second instance, 
he had made up his mind that the patriotic 
view would prevail. He was compelled to do 
right, not by his conscience, or judgment, or 
statesmanship, but by the vicious fear of losing. 

But, after all, are these weak-kneed public 
men — these "winners" — so much to blame? 
Do we not here perceive a national fault? Is 
it not true that we Americans have come to 
worship success more than righteousness? 
"Nothing succeeds like success" — that is our 
62 



THE VICIOUS FEAR OF LOSING 

shallow and materialistic epigram. Of course 
it is not true. He who makes "success, and 
nothing but success" his program through life, 
will find the inevitable Waterloo at the end of 
his career. 

The truth is that nothing succeeds but the 
right. 

For example, nearly every great reform was 
defeated at first. We forget that Wendell 
Phillips, while making an anti-slavery speech, 
was hooted in Faneuil Hall. His cause 
triumphed in the end, and, of course, Phillips 
and all of his great company are heroes now. 
Oh, yes, to be sure — heroes now! But hooted 
yesterday. There was Lincoln, too. Douglas 
beat him. He "got licked/' And he "got 
licked" on purpose, too. Mr. Churchill, in 
"The Crisis," tells the story of how the tempter 
came to Lincoln during that great debate and 
showed him the certainty of winning the 
Senatorship if he would adopt a certain policy. 
But Lincoln was not speaking to win the 
Senatorship. 

63 



WORK AND HABITS 

I am thoroughly against Mr. Bryan's 
political ideas. But what American fails to 
admire his dauntlessness ? I remember once 
reading, in a famous New York paper, a bril- 
liant article by a celebrated correspondent, de- 
scribing "the downfall of Bryan," How this 
correspondent pitied him! How clearly he 
pointed out the folly of Mr. Bryan's standing 
by his obsolete convictions, with the certainty 
of "losing out," rather than fall in with the 
powers that were then in control and becoming 
the hero of his party! Oh, yes, Mr. Bryan 
was "done for." But the heroism of Mr. 
Bryan's willingness to be politically riddled 
strengthened him more with his followers than 
a thousand successes. 

Undoubtedly Theodore Roosevelt has faced 
more incidents of that sort than any man now 
prominent in American public life. He has 
faced defeat, he has even invited defeat, so 
often that he is now probably unconscious of 
the power of the forces which he challenges. 
But Roosevelt has the luck of the chosen, 
64 



THE VICIOUS FEAR OF LOSING 

the fortune of the true man of destiny. Mr. 
Bryan has a courage equal to Mr. Roose- 
velt's, but Mr. Roosevelt is fortunate in 
championing the right side at the right time. 
There is a song: "I want what I want when 
I want it." It is important to be right at 
the right time. Mr. Roosevelt's strategy 

. is equal to his courage, and, in addition 
to that, he has the luck which seems to at- 
tend those whom the Fates ordain as their 

I ministers. 

To my mind there is nothing in our recent 
; national life so inspiring as the new spirit of 
righteousness that is again reasserting itself 
among the American millions — the old martyr- 
spirit that makes individuals and peoples worth 
while; the spirit of '76 and '64; the spirit that 
is willing to lose while battling for what ought 
to be rather than to win for what is. I shall 
hail the day when the American people will 
lift on their shoulders the man who dares to 
lose in their interests, rather than the man who 

5 — Work and Habits. 65 



WORK AND HABITS 

merely wins regardless of whether what he 
wins is good for the people or not. 

Naturally, these "winners" always try to 
make it appear that they have "won" in the 
people's interest. No doubt they would pre- 
fer to win in the people's interest, but that is 
not their first consideration. Their first con- 
sideration is to "win" — just to "w-i-n" — and 
win at all hazards — or, rather, not to appear 
to lose. It is all a question of "saving one's 
face." 

But there is one type of public man even 
more hurtful to the public interests than the 
"winner." This is the man who fears to make 
a record on anything, and who tries to avoid 
all possible conflict between principle and con- 
ditions, between the right thing that ought to 
be and the wrong thing that is. Such a man 
keeps out of sight until the issue is determined 
and the verdict rendered. Then he comes for- 
ward as having been all along upon the side 
which prevails. These foxlike people do not 
stand for anything except themselves. 
66 



THE VICIOUS FEAR OF LOSING 

They have neither the courage nor the merit 
of those brave, strong men who frankly stand 
up and battle with vigor, fearlessness and 
ability in favor of private interests as against 
public interests — many of these former are 
honest and, in a way, admirable. But the vel- 
vet-footed ones are secretly aiding the powers 
that be because the powers that be have re- 
sources ready at hand and can either reward or 
punish public men. On the other hand, the 
people, if too often thwarted, indulge in 
their revenges also, and, therefore, it is the 
creed of these self-servers in public life not 
openly to offend either the people or the 
interests. 

But the "winners" are not bad at all at heart. 
They are not corrupt. They are not especially 
craven. They are merely victims of the vicious 
fear of losing. They are adherents to our 
national religion of Success. They are vic- 
tims of the popular passion for victory. Nor 
do I want to be understood as rebuking this 
American spirit that demands achievement. I 

67 



WORK AND HABITS 

am only insisting that this spirit shall be ex- 
alted and glorified by a care for the methods 
by which victory is achieved and, above all, the 
purpose for which the fight is waged. I would 
have the average American come to look upon 
success in an unrighteous cause as worse than 
defeat, but I would also have him feel 
that this very Americanism demands that 
he shall fight for a cause unyieldingly, cease- 
lessly and forever, never knowing when he 
is "licked." 

Therefore, I would banish from the breast 
of my countryman the vicious fear of losing. 
I would eliminate from his soul the admiration 
for that kind of victory which merely prevails 
over an opponent, no matter whether that vic- 
tory was won for the right or the wrong. I 
would have this people return to that spirit 
which glorified the beginnings of the republic 
and which, in the teeth of kings and in the 
face of overwhelming armies, flung its denial 
to the theory that "might makes right." It 
was upon that denial that our fathers marched 
68 



THE VICIOUS FEAR OF LOSING 

to the field of battle and gave to the world the 
splendid story, first of Valley Forge, but, 
finally, of Yorktown. 

All forward movements have their Valley 

Forge, but inevitably, in the end, they have 

; their Yorktown, too. They all have their Bull 

Run in the beginning, but, in the end, they 

have also their Appomattox. 

Let us require not only public men, but also 
ourselves, to live up to those sayings of our 
great ones which make our history and thrill 
■ our blood to-day : 

"I will fight it out on this line if it takes 
4 all summer." 

"Don't give up the ship." 

"I have only begun to fight." 

But let us be sure we always say these things 
only for the right. Paul Jones was defeated. 
His ship was shot to pieces, in flames and sink- 
ing, but, shouted this typical American, "I 
have only begun to fight!" Paul Jones was 
fighting for the right. 

Lawrence was dying, but that was little or 

69 



WORK AND HABITS 

nothing to him. He was not concerned that 
he had given his life for his country. Rather 
he gloried in that fact. But "Don't give up 
the ship," exclaimed he as his brave heart 
stopped beating. Lawrence was fighting for 
the right. 

Grant had seen thousands of the best troops 
that ever charged to death mowed down before 
the enemy's guns. He was denounced as a 
butcher, a drunkard, an obstinate fool. But, 
said he: "I will fight it out on this line if it 
takes all summer." And that one sentence 
meant victory for the Union. Grant was fight- 
ing for the right. 

A crowd of men in House and Senate had 
resolved to resist a certain foolish and harm- 
ful measure. When the struggle had hardly 
begun, before the outposts had exchanged 
shots, one of the men came to his comrades 
and said: "I hear everybody over here is 
against us on this thing. Let us drop it. We 
cannot afford — to lose." 
70 



THE VICIOUS FEAR OF LOSING 

But the cause was not dropped. The faint- 
hearted one was dropped, but the cause was 
not dropped. It won — won splendidly. And 
it won not more on account of its merit than 
because of the stout-heartedness of the few 
faithful ones who believed that there is such 
a thing in this world as conviction, such things 
as right and wrong. 

I do not mean to counsel foolhardiness. 
That is as absurd in legislative life as it is in 
military life. Where you have fought a good 
fight and have actually secured important posi- 
tions, and where continuance of the struggle 
means the probable loss of the positions gained, 
you are the merest child of folly if you insist 
on taking that hazard. Such conduct indicates 
bravado and not bravery. Where such a strug- 
gle has resulted in substantial victory, and 
where further fight means the possible loss of 
the ground already gained, there let the battle 
close, secure the ground already won, and then 
another day take up the contest for the re- 
mainder — all this, of course, unless yielding 

7i 



WORK AND HABITS 

means to yield a principle, and, in that event," 
there is nothing to do but to fight to the last 
gasp and go on record, knowing that although 
you are in the minority to-day you will be in 
the majority to-morrow. 



72 






AMERICAN CHARACTER 

ILLUSTRATED BY 

WASHINGTON 



AMERICAN CHARACTER ILLUS- 
TRATED BY WASHINGTON 

THE purpose of civilization is character. 
The building up of commerce, the per- 
fection of arts, the development of 
science, the growth of law and the bringing of 
great masses of human beings beneath the 
sway of common rules of action — all these are 
noble phases of the evolution of the race. But 
greater than all these, and the composite re- 
sult of all, is human character. 

When we speak of Washington we speak of 
character. And, after all, this is the subject 
that most concerns each individual human be- 
ing. All of us are interested in the building 
of the nation, in the foreign affairs of the 
republic, in those vast domestic problems 
which now are compelling the wisest thought, 

75 



WORK AND HABITS 

highest courage and most unselfish patriotism 
of the American people and their statesmen. 
But to each of us, character is the most im- 
portant. The vital question of what we are, 
should be, may be, and therefore the infinite 
subject of our individual existence and per- 
sonal destiny now and for all time, enters into 
the lives of each one of us every hour of every 
day, every day of every year. 

A great man is merely the highest type of 
a people's character. He gathers unto himself 
the permanent thought of the masses. He is 
the composite personality of the millions. And 
so when we speak of Washington as our great- 
est American, we merely picture the highest 
type of the American people. He rose to the 
command of the American armies; he was the 
master worker in erecting the government; he 
became the first President of the republic. 
And he did all this by sheer power of char- 
acter. The colonies had abler statesmen, sol- 
diers as brilliant, politicians infinitely more 
adroit ; but he was the first in character. And 
76 



AMERICAN CHARACTER 

so he became the largest influence of his times 
for good — "first in war, first in peace, and first 
in the hearts of his countrymen." 

In considering the character of Washington, 
the thought is compelled that, first of all, he 
was a Christian; that the religion of the 
Saviour was the most powerful element in his 
life; and that the government of which he 
was the chief founder was and is a Christian 
republic. That is a fact which men forget in 
the hurry of trade and wars alarms and the 
laughter of prosperous peace; but it is the 
most vital truth in our national existence. 
George Washington wrought with religious 
fervor to make the nation, whose destinies his 
consecrated hands chiefly shaped, a nation 
whose God is the Lord. 

The sublimest figure in American history is 
Washington on his knees at Valley Forge. He 
was in that hour and place the American peo- 
ple personified, not depending on their own 
courage or goodness, but asking aid from God, 
their Father and Preserver. Washington knew 

77 



WORK AND HABITS 

that morals are priceless, but he knew that 
morals are from within. And so he knew that 
in that dread day when all,, save courage, had 
forsaken the American arms, appeal must be 
to that Power beyond ourselves eternal in the 
heavens, which after all, in every crisis of the 
lives of men and nations, has been their surest 
source of strength. 

Men and nations go forward in their pros- 
perous days boastfully content with their well- 
fed and often narrowly righteous lives. Men 
and nations in these fruitful periods of their 
existence glory in their strength and even in 
their goodness. But the strength is intoxica- 
tion; the righteousness is conventionality. 
Fate, that schoolmaster of the universe, brings 
to such men and nations her catastrophes. 
And in an instant their proud tongues are still, 
their arrogant hearts humbled, and they learn 
the great truth that enduring power and peace 
come not from within, but from the Giver of 
every good and perfect gift. 

George Washington knew that. That is 
78 



AMERICAN CHARACTER 

why he made the snows of Valley Forge his 
altar and on his knees asked aid from Him 
whom the enemy had forgotten. The British 
trusted in numbers and munitions — in infantry, 
cavalry, artillery. Washington trusted in these 
things, too; but also he trusted in the God of 
men and nations. And Washington won. 

Yes, but that was in his hour of weakness, 
distress and want. But when victory con- 
firmed the Declaration of Independence and we 
became a separate people ; when finally patriot- 
ism's loftiest dreams were realized and out of 
the years of failure and discord that succeeded 
the Revolution, the Constitution of the United 
States appeared, and the government of the 
republic began its immortal life with George 
Washington as its first President — did he then 
remember the power to which he appealed 
when famine and treason and death surrounded 
him? Listen to these words with which he 
opened his first inaugural — his first formal dec- 
laration as President of the American people: 

"It would be peculiarly improper to omit in 

79 



WORK AND HABITS 

this first official act my fervent supplications to 
that Almighty Being who rules over the uni- 
verse, who presides in the councils of nations, 
and whose providential aid can supply every 
human defect, that His benedictions may con- 
secrate to the liberties and happiness of the peo- 
ple of the United States a government insti- 
tuted by themselves for these essential pur- 
poses. ... In tendering this homage to the 
Great Author of every public and private good, 
I assure myself that it expresses your senti- 
ments not less than my own, nor those of my 
fellow-citizens at large no less than either. No 
people can be bound to acknowledge and adore 
the Inevitable Hand which conducts the affairs 
of men more than those of the United States. 
Every step by which they have advanced to 
the character of an independent nation seems 
to have been distinguished by some token of 
providential agency." 

And in his first Thanksgiving proclamation 
he acknowledges "the interpositions of God's 
providence in the Revolutionary War." 
80 



AMERICAN CHARACTER 

To the Jews of America Washington wrote : 
"May the same wonder-working Deity, who 
long since delivered the Hebrews from their 
Egyptian oppressors, and planted them in the 
promised land, whose providential agency has 
lately been conspicuous in establishing these 
United States as an independent nation, still 
continue to water them with the dews of 
heaven and to make the inhabitants of every 
denomination participate in the temporal and 
spiritual blessings of that people whose God 
is Jehovah/' 

Like a heroic figure of the ancient days he 
seems — the days when men were great enough 
to believe undoubtingly. Not Moses, the law- 
giver supplicating on the sacred mountain for 
worldly wisdom from divine sources; not 
Joshua, the warrior, or Gideon, the hero, 
smiting with the sufficient sword of an un- 
questioning faith; not Daniel, unshaken amid 
disaster with certain understanding that when 
the just punishment of his people should be ful- 
filled, golden days would come again — not 

6— Work and Habits. 3 1 



WORK AND HABITS 

these nor any of these mighty headlands of the 
race were surer of the heavenly origin of all 
real power, real wisdom and real worth than 
was this primal man, who in the common 
speech of the American millions, is called the 
Father of His Country. 

George Washington believed in Providence, 
and said so. He believed that we Americans 
are God's people, and that this nation was 
fashioned by the Almighty Hand for divine 
purposes in the ongoing of the world, and said 
so. To this simple and sublime belief he gave 
constant and fervent voice. He did not fear 
the large and noble destiny which this con- 
ception of his country produced. He did not 
believe that he was fighting to found a pigmy 
republic, unable to enjoy liberty's blessings or 
to discharge liberty's vast and ever-growing 
duties. No! Washington believed that the 
American people, whose feet the Ruler of the 
Universe had set upon the paths of liberty, 
would grow in power and righteousness as they 
moved forward, broadening their influence 
82 



AMERICAN CHARACTER 

with each day's march and blessing every land 
and every race which that spreading influence 
touched, until the divine purposes for which 
this nation was established should be accom- 
plished. And so believe the American people, 
whose type and personification George Wash- 
ington was and is. 

But this stainless one was fiercely assailed. 
How strange that mankind will abuse its saints 
and heroes living, and exalt them dead ! God 
never gave the world a character so noble that 
calumny did not try to blacken it. Even the 
Master was slandered, then crucified, then 
worshiped. And George Washington did not 
escape. It is a singular circumstance that most 
of the maligners of the great and good have 
been educated men, skilled writers, trained in- 
tellects. Witness the scribes and Pharisees. 
Not from the masses of the people — sweet and 
pure themselves— come these base suggestions 
about mankind's noble ones. No! the people 
— true themselves — usually estimate aright 
these servants of the race. But those in whom 

81 



WORK AND HABITS 

a superculture has eaten from the soul the 
natural, the generous and the good, leaving 
only artificiality and envy and bitterness — these 
have been in all countries and all times the 
ideal agents of those who, for selfish purposes, 
have slandered upright men. 

This was true of Washington. They said 
his religion was hypocrisy, his immovable de- 
termination a fixed selfishness, his patriotism 
a sham. They said he was a politician, and 
that for the purpose of power he linked him- 
self with the infamous and the vile. It is hard, 
to-day, to believe that such charges were made 
against this greatest of Americans, whose splen- 
did fame shines across the century, as it will 
forever shine across all centuries, with pure and 
increasing radiance. 

Yet these are only specimens of the slanders 
published against George Washington in a 
desperate attempt to break the people's faith 
in him. The National Gazette, edited by the 
accomplished Philip Freneau, and owned by a 
powerful public man, who hated Washington, 
84 



AMERICAN CHARACTER 

reeked with suggestion, insinuation and posi- 
tive charge. Pamphlets written with a finished 
art were scattered broadcast, flaming with de- 
nunciation. Listen to an editorial typical of 
many like it, published when Washington was 
President : 

"Mr. Washington obtained character upon 
trust. ... As Mr. Washington has become 
treacherous even to his own fame, what was 
lent to him as a harmless general must be with- 
drawn from him as a dangerous politician. 
. . . When we strip from him the borrowed 
plumage which he has so long worn with an 
apparent innocence, it is solely because he has 
chosen to associate himself with birds of prey." 

And here is another in a different vein : 

"Posterity will in vain search for any monu- 
ments of wisdom in your administration. You 
are inordinately fond of flattery. Indirect 
praise is to you the language of sincerity." 

These wreckers of character wrote that 
Washington was debauched; that he was a 
schemer using his high office for personal ad- 

85 



WORK AND HABITS 

vantage. Those whom Washington appointed 
to office were called "a corrupt squadron 5 ' until 
the phrase became famous. In all these storms 
and tempests of abuse, which never ceased 
while he remained in public life, George Wash- 
ington stood immovable and silent. To his 
friends he raged as any honest man must do. 
But before the people whom his slanderers 
sought to influence he was mute. To his near 
ones he declared : "I would rather be in my 
grave than endure this any longer." 

But he scorned to defend himself with the 
weapons of those who attacked him. He re- 
fused to deny falsehood — refused to state his 
side of the case, and amid the clamor of mis- 
representation and abuse he remained dumb as 
the voiceless and patient stars. He had faith 
in the wisdom of the people. He believed that 
time and events — those unfailing judges of all 
men and all things — would answer his de- 
tainers more surely and convincingly than 
could he or any other human agency. Not in 
desperate battle, not in fateful council did 
86 



AMERICAN CHARACTER 

Washington show such Christian fortitude as 
when, to those who sought to ruin his adminis- 
tration, defeat his plans, blacken his reputation, 
he gave the splendid answer of complete and 
utter silence. But it was not a free press that 
vilified George Washington; it was a pur- 
chased press, published not in the interests of 
the people but for the purposes of its owner. 

The dearest hope of Washington was that 
the American people should be a righteous 
nation — next to that, a peaceful people. Public 
utterances, private letters, all the words of this 
typical American counsel three things su- 
premely — righteousness, nationality, peace. 
Yet this most pacific soul of his time and 
country was also the greatest warrior of his 
time and country. It is one of those strange 
paradoxes in which the deepest truth is some- 
times found that men w T ho hate conflict most 
are yet the most relentless fighters of the world. 
The two sentences of Ulysses S. Grant that re- 
veal his character and will live forever are 
these: "Let us have peace," and this other, 

87 



WORK AND HABITS 

"I will fight it out on this line if it takes all 
summer." It is that high type of character 
which loves peace so well and hates war so 
well that it will sacrifice, compromise, yield up 
to a point where honor is reached, and then 
fight with a willingness that is almost joy, 
with an abandon that braves all consequences, 
with a determination that knows no weakening. 

Such a man was William the Silent. 
Such was Cromwell. Such was the great com- 
mander of our Civil War. Such are those 
unconquerable spirits sometimes found in 
political and civil life. Such is that splendid 
American whose character is typical of the 
highest and best in American life and aspira- 
tion, Theodore Roosevelt. And such peculiarly 
and supremely was Washington. Working, 
planning, praying for peace through all his life, 
yet all his life he was on some field of battle. 

And in warfare it was his fate from youth 
to age to lead forlorn hopes. It is as curious 
as it is inspiring that, from that time in his 
youth when he surrendered Fort Necessity to 

88 Ltft 



AMERICAN CHARACTER 

the French he never entered a contest that did 
not seem impossible to ordinary men. He 
never planned a campaign that did not begin 
in disaster, continue in defeat, and ripen into 
victory only after limitless courage and effort. 
This is an American quality. We Ameri- 
cans, as individuals and as a nation, want 
peace more than all else in this world but 
honor. But when this may not be had, we 
Americans, as individuals and as a nation, make 
battle the business of our lives, find encourage- 
ment in defeat, food in hunger, inspiration for 
continued struggle in every fresh disaster. 
That courage is mere intoxication which in- 
creases on success; that courage is sublime 
which waxes strong and joyous in temporary 
defeat. The world and fate itself cannot down 
such dauntlessness as that. And that is the 
hero quality of the American blood. It is the 
quality which makes each of us in our daily 
lives know that every apparent misfortune is 
only destiny's test of our quality and worth 
before destiny gives us permanent success. 



WORK AND HABITS 

Let every man who has conflict, difficulty, 
discouragement, take thought of the fearless 
soul of Washington and be revived to struggle 
on, knowing that in the end success is cer- 
tain, victory sure. For Washington struggled 
on through midnight, eating disaster's bitter 
bread, with Fate's remorseless hand apparently 
thrusting him ever back; and to all eyes ex- 
cept the eyes of his own faith, the face of 
God himself turned from him. Let this 
glorious spirit of the Father of His Country 
be the spirit of each one of us Americans in 
our personal life, and of the republic in our 
national existence. Let us move forward with 
high purpose, knowing that obstacles are but 
opportunities to prove our worthiness. 

With all their wisdom the great men of our 
early days lacked vision except on the funda- 
mentals of character and natural powers of 
government. For example, Thomas Jefferson 
in a formal message to Congress declared that 
the thirteen original colonies had enough terri- 
tory to last the American people for a thou- 
90 



AMERICAN CHARACTER 

sand generations — thirty thousand years. One 
generation proved that absurd. James Madison 
vetoed a bill to construct a national road be- 
cause Congress had no power to make internal 
improvements. To-day continuous use makes 
this power commonplace. 

But in elemental wisdom the lawgivers who 
established this nation have not been equaled 
since the greatest lawgiver of all time brought 
down the sacred tables from Sinai. For ex- 
ample, Washington knew what luxury and 
extravagance mean to men and nations. He 
knew that, no matter how resistless our navy, 
how numberless the soldiers we may rally to 
our colors, how exhaustless our resources, how 
powerful our accumulated wealth, if an un- 
regulated extravagance corrupt individual or 
national character we are a lost people. 

Extravagance, personal or national, is im- 
moral. It is a theft of the future. It is the 
result of a dishonest bookkeeping of character. 
Prosperity powerfully tempts men and nations 
to this vice; and the ability to resist it shows 

91 



WORK AND HABITS 

whether man or nation deserves prosperity. 
Loose habits of thinking instead of exactness 
and cleanmindedness ; slippered slovenliness of 
conduct instead of booted, erect and ready- 
action; resources wasting and desires increas- 
ing, with nothing to take the place of what we 
spend — these are the processes and results of 
individual and national extravagance. 

Against this, the teachings and life of Wash- 
ington are constant, fierce, determined protest, 
and no lesson of this life is needed more 
to-day by the American man and woman in 
the home and by the American people as a 
nation. As individuals and as a people we have 
fallen into, the period of waste. The last four 
decades have been an era of extravagance. 
Ever since the Civil War we have been ex- 
hausting our resources under the boast that we 
were developing them. But the destruction of 
wealth is not the creation of wealth, though it 
may be made to look the same. And this is 
what we Americans have been doing. 

We have cut our forests thoughtlessly, law 
92 



AMERICAN CHARACTER 

lessly, ruthlessly, as though we had been de- 
stroying invaders trying to lay waste the land, 
instead of citizens trying to preserve the 
country's strength. We have cut our forests, 
not for useful purposes alone, but that a dozen 
men might be absurdly, vulgarly, sometimes 
criminally enriched; and ten generations must 
suffer for the making of these worse than use- 
less millionaires. We have ripped the treas- 
uries of ore from our western mountains 
which, properly taken, might have served the 
nation for unnumbered years. By the same 
methods and with the same results we have 
been exhausting our soil by the unscientific and 
thoughtless methods of agriculture and put 
upon the land the burden that tyrants put upon 
a conquered people, making our fields produce 
the utmost limit of their yield without return- 
ing to the earth the elements of its renewal. 
In every department of material activity we 
have rifled our resources as a burglar rifles a 
bank vault and spent them with the burglar's 
fevered and hasty recklessness. 

93 



WORK AND HABITS 

The spirit of Washington bids the Americar 
people to-day to sober itself from this saturnalia 
of personal and national extravagance. And 
the American people will remedy this evil. No 
permanent error can find lodgment in the 
American mind. No enduring wrong can 
grow in American character. Liberty makes 
certain our knowledge of the facts, and the 
discussion of our weakness means its correc- 
tion. And so it is that free institutions are 
the great preventative of national degeneration. 
Liberty of speech; faithful and fearless voices 
speaking to the millions from pulpit and plat- 
form ; a free and honest press telling the masses 
the truth about men and measures — all the 
elements of free institutions spell optimism. 

So we see that free institutions are the self- 
restorers of American character and conduct. 
The nature of these eighty millions is also a 
guaranty of self-recovery and unending ad- 
vance in purity and power. Luther Burbank, 
the miracle-worker of modern science, says 
the processes which are building up the Ameri- 
94 



AMERICAN CHARACTER 

can people are gradually producing the highest 
type of man and woman. We are refreshing 
our vitality from the soil. The coarse and 
vital peasantry that come to us from other lands 
are human fresh material which our institutions 
will work into power. Our blood is a mixture 
of the most virile currents drawn from the veins 
of the most virile nations, with the Teutonic 
blood the largest element. And thus this knit- 
ting together of the strongest types of all the 
nations, and the molding of the people thus 
produced by free institutions, constantly renew 
and keep us normal, sane and steady. 

And so free institutions and elements that 
make up the American millions will save this 
nation from degeneration, make it sweet and 
pure and powerful, increasing in vigor and 
righteousness as it increases in age and num- 
bers. Thus the dream of Washington shall be 
realized; for his whole soul yearned for 
American nationality, his whole life was given 
to establish American nationality. Nationality ! 
Nationality! Not a confederation of states 

95 



WORK AND HABITS 

whose destiny small and ambitious men might 
at any time control; but a nation of people 
united by a common tongue, a common faith, 
common and mutual interest, and moving for- 
ward to a common and single destiny, not 
under a multitude of petty banners, but beneath 
one supreme and glorious flag! That was 
Washington's dream ; and such a nation events 
and the years are building. 

We care for prosperity— care for the bend- 
ing fields of wheat, for merchandise, for com- 
merce; the thunder of our countless factories 
and the mighty noise of our numberless and 
overladen trains — all these are high music in 
the ears of this practical nation. We care for 
them all, care for them vastly. But more than 
for all these — -more than for gold and opulence, 
more than for peace and more than for war, 
we Americans care for righteousness and be- 
lieve that in the religion of Mary's thorn- 
crowned Son is found the highest righteousness 
possible to man. And so we follow the high 
example of George Washington. 
96 



113 82 












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